Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

By now those of you who have read some of my posts know that I have no real use for Plaxo (although I am a ‘member’) but am a regular user of LinkedIn. I have yet to become what I see a number of people are which is what I call a ‘serial networker’. Those with more than 500 contacts fit this moniker. I have over 300 and personally know and have met almost every single person in my network. This is unlike Twitter on which I have nearly 600 followers but have met under 30. More on following large groups of people on Twitter in a subsequent post.

But I really think LinkedIn provides are great tool and service for business people. Since the information is self-provided it is generally accurate if not a bit embellished. (Save for the prevaricators that are no doubt members as well but hopefully not in my network). Whenever I am given a new contact via referral the first thing I do is type their name into the search function of LinkedIn. It does not work every time since there are still many folks who are not on LinkedIn or there are times when there are too many John Smiths to figure even if you know the geographic location. Since the information is what people provide on their own and when you do get a proper profile you get a snapshot of their location, career path, education and even a few interests. This is BEFORE you have even LinkedIn with them. And answering questions in specific areas does build your standing and reputation as a resource which has helped me and our company gain business.

But it gets better than that. Search by company can provide position locations for job searches. Industries can be investigated by category. And people with whom you have lost touch can be found (yes this is done on Facebook and other social networks as well). Of course you can get great information via Google and Yahoo but I have found LinkedIn to be faster and quite reliable.

Did I mention that Linkedin is free? They do have a revenue model for enhanced access and the ability to send messages to people with whom you would like to be in touch but have no contact. More importantly introductions via people you are connected to work out really well as there is a level of inherent trust built in.

I don’t understand why anyone would not want to be listed on LinkedIn. The days of reveling in ones anonymity are over. People can find out things about you in many other places. Just ask and read about Justice Scalia this past week. Wouldn’t want them to find out things about you from your own perspective?

Have a great holiday weekend.

As the old saying goes if I had a dollar for every time I read a fellow Tweeter’s throw down about them guaranteeing you will ‘DOMINATE TWITTER’ I could retire fat and happy. I have been using Twitter for about 10 months and somehow have acquired more than 550 ‘followers’. However I have no desire to ‘dominate’ them or anyone else in the Twitter Universe.

From what I can gather by dominating Twitter and having large amounts of followers (Ashton Kutcher got to one million followers recently – proudly he noted) offers you a database for you to push your products or services. My sense is this is not a sustainable business model in any way. It may work for a while but eventually I see people ‘following’ smaller not larger amounts of people. And following people that you actually are interested in will dominate.

How can you possibly follow 500 people much less 40,000? The answer is you cannot. Since Twitter is still new building large followings may seem like the thing to do. But since most of us have limited time for just about everything the only way to monitor large numbers of followers is to be on Twitter all the time. If you look away for 15 minutes tweets can be buried pages back. And I sincerely doubt there are many people that are looking back at tweets they might have missed.

Where is the value in Twitter? There is great value in the ability to monitor conversations about a brand. There is also value in tweeting or re-tweeting things that interest you that you want to share with your followers. Real time news reporting at the events has a great impact and can get important information out to people as fast as it happens – and that’s never happened before in human history!

But Twitter domination is a pretty obnoxious concept as far as I am concerned. I want to work with people. And I don’t need to beat down others who are trying to exchange ideas and information. So give up you Twitterific Dominator ‘professors’. How about you try to collaborate and work with others to make business and the world a little bit better. Now there’s a dominating concept! What say you?

Look even though I am an inveterate marketing guy I am tiring of the move to advertisements on most all social networks. It’s gotten to the point where friends of mine are using social networking to advertise their own businesses and ideas to their friends (like me!). Yes I realize social networks need a business model. But it seems to me that the direction in which social networks are heading is to just be platform to sell more stuff. This could prove to be the undoing of social networking.

Several months ago I wrote about World of Warcraft as perhaps the most effective social network of them all. Why? Because the folks at Blizzard Entertainment do not refer to it as a social network in any way! WOW has more than 11,000,000 paying ‘members’ who get true value and engagement for their dollars. Second Life tried this model (sort of) as well but it has not worked out nearly as well.

How could things be changed? Well for one thing let’s say you had to pay $ 5.95/month to be a Facebook member to not be served advertising. How would that make you feel? Would it be any less engaging? I don’t think so. And there is a pretty good revenue model opportunity for FB with more than 200 million members. Just do the math. (Hint – You may need to use a calculator.)

Just this week the Wall Street Journal (and other publishers are thinking the same way) floated out the idea of micropayments (i.e. charging for some content) since giving the content away for free devalues the very content itself. There was also a study saying the 97% of people would pay for content. http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/11/newspapers-paid-content-survey-technology-paidcontent.html

Obviously we are still in the nascent stages in the evolution of social networking (and marketing for that matter). But the perceived golden goose may be inflicted with swine flu if things do not change soon. People will tire of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc. . . There will be a new and better platform to replace it unless the model changes to serve the ever-changing needs and desires of social network members.

It’s no secret that communication has undergone more change in the past 133 years than in the entirety of human history prior to that.  The telephone opened up one-to-one communication in a way that altered the relationship slate.   

Fast forward to the advent of the cellular phone in the 1980’s and that too altered communication between people.  But the cellular phone also changed the dynamic when it came to convenience.  The cell caller would be driving or wherever and ring up someone they were thinking about sometimes just to pass the time.   It was convenient for the caller but not necessarily for the recipient. 

Then in the 1990’s email came into play.  People over 35 have been dealing with email for nearly 20 years and while we are all aware of the problems, at least with email you get the opportunity to decide when (and if) you want to respond.  Sure SPAM is a pain in the **!!  …but it is ok to ignore it as nobody is really sure if you read an email or not (despite the annoying read receipt things that never really seem to work).  

More recently (the past ten years) the rise of mobile messaging (see: texting) has exploded along with social networking sites.  The immediacy of text messaging is such a powerful medium but it’s not all good.  While it is the primary way for me to reach my teenage daughter and for her to reach me (email is so irrelevant to the Millenials) I am finding that friends, (and not necessarily close friends – why did I give them my mobile number in the first place) are sending me text messages and EXPECTING A RESPONSE – IMMEDIATELY! 

To boot sometimes I have an exchange with someone I don’t know all that well but I am not quite sure how to end the string.  Who ends it?  What is the protocol?   When is it ok to just stop?   These are still my friends and sometimes business associates.  I like them.  But if I am out at dinner and engaged in a serial text exchange I don’t look at my phone nor would it be polite to whip it out (no Cleavon Little reference here!) and respond.  So the communication dies off into the ether.  It’s odd. 

Then there are the requests from the hinterlands to be a friend to someone you knew 30+ years ago in high school on Facebook.  I can ignore some/most of these as there is likely a reason why we have not been in touch for 30 years.  However frequently it’s very cool to reconnect with someone you liked that you lost touch with and that’s one of the beauties of social networking.   But for most of those the initial reconnect is all that I want.  How’s your life worked out?  Cool.  Maybe we’ll get together sometime despite the fact that you live in Texas and I live in Connecticut.  I don’t need much more than that.  There just is not enough time in the day to engage 50 people or more in various stages of innocuous conversation.   And these are people I know and like (at least for the most part). 

There is no real solution.  But my overriding thought is that in the past you would think about someone you had not seen or heard from in quite a while and that would be it.  Maybe you could send them a letter (remember writing letters?) or try to find their phone number if you even knew where they lived.  Now you can quickly and accurately search them in a number of different places, find them and send them a message over a social network and await a response.   Don’t be surprised if they ignore it.  You can always wonder if they might not have gotten the message at all. 

Communications between humans will never again be as it was.  Is that progress?   I say yes and no.  What say you? 

Watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama was indeed an inspiring thing even if it was on television.   Sadly I did not receive an invitation.  Seeing my friends update their pages on Facebook such that photos taken at the inauguration were posted immediately also was a cool way to interact and get a bird’s eye feel for how it might have been to be there.  

Magazines like LIFE and the Saturday Evening Post used to perform the same function.  Detailed photo spreads on events of the day made their product must see media.

So while most of the weekly magazines are doing their darndest to remain alive (and this is apparently a losing battle – see US News going to a monthly!) the way magazines could stage a revival would be to offer a product that the internet simply cannot compete with.  Lush photo spreads of the inaugural on heavy paper would be a collector’s item for sure and a hefty cover price to boot would be a huge draw for readers and advertisers alike.  Count on several being on the newsstand next week although I have no advance knowledge of a particular publication taking this direction.  

My 15 year old daughter still gets Seventeen Magazine and told me that she would rather get the magazine than read it on the internet but she likes having access to both.   She/I pays for the subscription and reads it cover to cover as soon as she gets it.  Talk about connection!   There is something about seeing photos on high gloss high quality paper that makes them much more memorable than when viewed on your computer screen.  

So while it is no surprise that the mass magazine appeal of the 1950’- 1980’s is dying away, magazines occupy an important part of the media equation.   Upgrade the paper, charge more and connect with the audience in a personal way by delivering them the content they want to see and read.   The market may be much smaller but it will still be a market after all…